


When you've been out of the courtship game a few centuries

by Anonymous



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Background Relationships, Comedy, F/M, Flirting, Implied Sexual Content, Nudity, Sexual Tension, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED, Teasing, talking about sex, this sounds so much sexier than the fic really is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:34:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26475763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Nile and Booker aren't in mutual lust and potentially more for one another... but the only ones buying that is the two of them.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nile Freeman
Comments: 11
Kudos: 188
Collections: Anonymous





	When you've been out of the courtship game a few centuries

**Author's Note:**

> The French is online translated. Apologies in advance.  
> Also, I had no intention of shipping Book of Nile, but here I am.

They’ve had to change clothes around each other before, and they were going to freeze to death if they stayed in the wet clothing long, so nobody was thinking much of it when they started to strip out of their clothes. Most of them were thinking not much of it, Andy realized when she noticed something. Booker hadn’t been back with the team long, but he’d been with her, Nicky, and Joe for two centuries, so he started to strip down to get into the dry clothes like the rest of them, not paying much attention to the fact that there were two more women in the group these days.

Not that Quynh was paying any attention to his growing nakedness.

That’s okay, because Nile was paying enough attention for everyone in the room plus. She was literally holding her dripping jeans in her hands still because she was too busy dragging her eyes up and down Booker’s body like she was starving and he was a five-course meal.

Okay, Andy swung both ways, so she knows all her boys are lookers. Not that she had eyes for anyone but Quynh since she finally got her back. But Nile has definitely never drooled over Nicky and Joe, or she was far more discreet about it if she had. She glanced over at Quynh, and - yep - Quynh’s noticed. Before she can suggest not embarrassing their two youngest members, Quynh was already talking.

“Take a picture, Nile, it’ll last longer.”

“What?” Nile jerked towards her, clearly flustered in her embarrassment. She finally dropped the jeans and yanked on the new dry pants. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Uh-huh.” Quynh was grinning like a shark that smelled blood. “So you weren’t just-”

“I wasn’t doing anything! I was changing!”

Joe and Nicky were frowning over at them now, and Booker had taken the time to glance over as well. “Stop picking on the kid, Quynh.”

“Who are you calling kid? I’m over a hundred now!” Nile snapped at him.

Booker held up his hands and opened his mouth to apologize, but before he could Quynh decided to add more fuel to the fire. “That so-called kid was just molesting you with her eyes, Sebastien.”

“I was not!” Nile cried out as Booker started to turn red.

“You literally forgot to pull your new pants on to cover your ass because you were too busy looking at his.”

“Really, Nile, I thought you had better taste!” Joe teased.

“I was not checking out his pasty ass.” Nile growled over at Quynh, who was completely unfazed by her denial.

“Oh, I didn’t think from your angle you could see his-”

“That’s enough, Quynh!” Booker cut her off, cheeks still flushed in embarrassment.

Quynh’s grin somehow managed to grow sharper. “Don’t worry, Nile. Booker was struggling to keep his eyes off your cleavage the entire night of the Mayor's party. So either you both need to get laid, or you need to have a serious conversation. Or, y’know, both.”

“Okay, Quynh - enough of picking on the babies.” Andy cuffed her arm. Booker looked ready to hide in the snowstorm outside soon, and Nile seemed to be considering the coat closet as a viable alternative.

“Dibs on the second room.” Joe speaks up, grabbing Nicky’s hand, grinning like this is the best thing ever. Fucking romantic that he is, he’s probably enjoying the two’s dance around each other. Andy thinks they should just fuck and sort out the details later.

“Did I mention there are only three rooms?” Quynh followed suit, grabbing Andy’s hand and tugging her toward one of the non-claimed rooms.

“Have a good night.” Nicky was not above getting his own shot in, before they disappeared.

Andy paused at the door to their bedroom long enough to hear the two blurt out at each other. “I can sleep on the couch.” She rolled her eyes and shut the door before Quynh could barge back out and do more damage. “Don’t think that was smart.”

“Modern people. So ridiculous.” Her lover grumbled.

* * *

  
Nile couldn’t remember ever being this tense in bed. Deciding to share it was probably a bad idea. They had their backs to each other and were basically hanging onto the edge like direct contact might kill them. After ten more minutes of not finding sleep and being fully aware Booker wasn’t either, she decided to bite the bullet. “This is stupid, we’ve had each other brains and guts on us before.” She flopped onto her back.

Booker snorted in amusement but didn’t follow her lead. “I could still sleep on the couch.”

“You move from this bed, I will shoot you.”

“Well, since you put it that way…” Silence followed the words for a moment. “About what Quynh said-”

“I’m sorry.” Nile broke in.

“Quoi?”

“I… I didn’t mean to stare at you, but I’ve never seen you naked and - you wear a lot of layers, you know that? Not that that’s an excuse for peeping or y’know…” This was potentially more embarrassing than Quynh calling her out, but she continued. “I didn’t mean to objectify you or anything. I just… didn’t know you had such a nice body.”

“Je-ça ... merci?”

Nile began to snicker at the words. “Did you just thank me for saying you were hot?”

“Dieu aide moi, je suis un idiot.” Booker groaned. “I really am not used to-”

“Compliments?”

“How about I’ve been out of the courting game for 300 years and I have no fucking idea what’s appropriate to say or do sound?”

“Were you looking at my cleavage then?”

“I didn’t mean to objectify you either-”

“I mean, I thought my boobs looked great in that dress, so I wouldn’t have a problem with you thinking so as long as you weren’t a creeper about it. Which you weren’t, you didn’t say anything, let alone anything inappropriate.”

“Your bosom looked amazing in the gown, Nile, so - yes - I noticed.”

“My bosom looked amazing? Did you honestly just say that?” Nile began to laugh in earnest and was glad when Booker joined her. “Holy shit, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I am telling Quynh you said that, though. In fact, I am bragging about my amazing bosom for the rest of the month.”

“Joe will get the biggest kick out of it.”

“How did you manage to woo a wife?”

“Wooing didn’t involve discussing being naked around each other in my day, Nile.”

“Oh, yeah, what did you do?”

“You wrote love letters to your friends.”

“Wait, to your friends?” Nile turned her head to look at him, and Booker finally flopped onto his back as well. “How did that help win a girl? Did they read them to her?”

“No, you wrote your friends, and they looked into the potential spouse. It worked both ways.”

“Okay, so basically these letters were the equivalent of a text saying you just met the hottest person on the planet, but you don’t even know their name. And then the friends did the eighteenth century equivalent of online stalking the person to see if they were good enough for their bestie.”

“When you put it that way, courtship really hasn’t changed that much.” Booker suggested.

Nile grinned, turning on her side to look at him more closely. “So then what happened?”

“You would try to be at someplace they visited, or a party they went to. Hoping they’d notice you.”

“So basically you figured out she liked Starbucks and just hung out at the Starbucks, hoping for the chance to say hi? I mean, how did you know if she liked you?”

“There were tokens.”

“So you gave each other gifts?”

“No, gifts were inappropriate at that level of interaction. It was things like letting you have a space on her dance card, or you would keep her glove or her scarf or flower.”

“Kleptomania was a form of courtship?”

Booker laughed, turning on his side to look at her. “No, they were left on purpose so you knew she was interested.”

“Didn’t anybody just hook up?”

“The rich did all the time. The middle class got stuck trying not to cause a scandal because they didn’t have the money to hide it.”

“Got it, so what happens after the kleptomaniac portion of flirting?”

“That’s when you got around to asking for formal introductions. And then you could ask her parents to court her, and then you go on walks together, as long as you had an appropriate chaperone.”

“Wow, like no shotgun marriages back then, huh?”

“Oh, there were. But they were mostly arranged. Then it was like, oh you marry her. Live with it.”

“Well, that sounds awful.”

“Most couples actually dealt with it fairly well. I mean, you were usually both in the same boat if it came to that. You could learn to like someone just by being with each other regularly. Some even fell in love. But, no, not all of those ended well. Especially for the women. Even if you went through the steps of courtship, it usually involved as much about appropriate finances and social connections than plain romanticism.”

“You really know how to sell your era.”

“It wasn’t all horrid. There was fun.”

“Didn’t you all sneak away to neck or something? C’mon, you had to have.”

“Curtains.” Booker replied.

“Curtains?”

“Ballrooms were very fond of curtains. The right ones had alcoves. Plus, carriages had curtains.”

“You went down on people in carriages??” Nile squealed, a grin stretching her face. Booker hid his own, laughing despite his ears turning slightly red. Nile considered it for a minute. “Holy shit, you literally went down. Like literally.”

Despite his obvious embarrassment, Booker met her gaze with a grin that was full of filthy promises. “Well, the skirts in those days were pretty wide.”

“Fuck… damn.” She suddenly had a very visual image of Booker on his knees, under her own skirt - damn it, she didn’t wear loose skirts but she was going to invest in a closetful if she ever got the chance to have him do that. “Okay, that’s pretty hot.”

Booker laughed again. “I mean, I think it beats bathroom stalls, don’t you?”

“Don’t knock it 'til you try it.”

“Oh, so you’ve done the bathroom stall thing?” Booker asked.

Fair’s fair, she decided. He had confessed to his dirty deeds. “More like the supply tent, and it was dusty. But, y’know. Going down did happen.” She watched his eyes widen, and the bob of his adam’s apple as he swallowed. Oh, he was definitely thinking about that. “Soooo… my era kind of invented fuck first, talk about feelings later-”

“Pretty sure Andy and Quynh would disagree-” His tone sounded strangled.

“No pressure, but if you’re interested in trying that out..”

“Putain d'enfer, Nile.”

“That a no?”

“That is very much not a no.”

She moved quickly, straddling his waist and looking down at where his hair spilled over the pillow. His eyes were watching her with as much awe as desire, and damn if that didn’t do wonders for her ego. “Good.” She leaned down and sealed the deal with a kiss.


End file.
